


And The Stars, They Sing

by Interrobang



Category: Original Work
Genre: M/M, THANKS VIM FOR THE COMM I LOVE UR TIEFS PARTICULARLY THE BEEFLING, Tieflings, this story is POST CONFLICT u gotta check out Vim's work for more deets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-12
Updated: 2020-09-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:35:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26415013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Interrobang/pseuds/Interrobang
Summary: Post-reconciliation, Tuhka and Lazarus try to figure out how they fit together again.
Relationships: Original Male Character/Original Male Character
Comments: 5
Kudos: 16





	And The Stars, They Sing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Vimeddiee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vimeddiee/gifts).



> This was super super fun to work on and I am in love with all of V's work, so it was especially rewarding to write something with their characters. I got all the deep Lore to feast on. UvU
> 
> To see more of the reference images for Tuhka and Laz, plus some of their history and interactions, check out Vimeddiee's work on Tapas!  
> https://tapas.io/episode/1515276

The grey-blue waves of the coast crashed against the cliffs below Tuhka’s forge, sending their spray high into the air in a mist just fine enough to lace the whipping wind with salt. Tuhka slowly led his former— friend? Family?-- down the switchback trails built into the crumbling face of the cliffs. At the bottom, nearly indistinguishable from the rocky shore, was a small seaweed-laden recess in the rocks. It wasn’t so much a structure as a suggestion of one; the only sign that it was well-used were the two sturdy iron hooks Tuhka had installed in the sheer walls. 

Tuhka looked at it with a more critical eye than usual. He felt, for some reason, the urge to impress Lazarus with the life he’d made here. With how he’d changed, or the work he’d taken on, or the home he’d built. _Something_ , something that proved he hadn’t wasted the chance he’d been given; that his— _abandonment_ wasn’t for naught.

Lazarus had looked around his forge with curiosity, and taken a keen eye to Tuhka’s living space, but Tuhka felt like there had to be _more_. Not just some humble life of work and sleep, but something of worth to match the confidence and panache with which Lazarus carried himself.

His corner of land, with the churning ocean vast and gleaming before them and the coming night unfurling above, seemed as precious an offering as he could give on short notice.

Tuhka unfurled the bundle he’d grabbed out of the corner of his front room when Lazarus had asked if there was anywhere else they could talk. Acutely aware of the other tiefling’s eyes on him, Tuhka adjusted the hammock’s fastenings on the hooks already drilled into the rock and let it shake out in the breeze. He jostled it briskly a few times to get old sand out, then turned, smiling carefully as he gestured. “After you.”

“Just the one hammock, then?” Lazarus asked.

“Ooria isn’t keen on them,” Tuhka admitted reluctantly. Best not to linger on that, no matter how much Lazarus said he was happy Tuhka had found family. “She has a hard time climbing in and out of them.”

“You’re big enough though, aren’t you,” Lazarus said, his tail twitching back and forth as he eyed Tuhka’s relatively new several feet of height. 

“Mmm,” Tuhka hummed noncommittally, rubbing the back of his neck where the tension had started to build like it did after a long day of smithing. “Anyway…” He gestured at the hammock swinging in the sea breeze. 

Lazarus climbed into the big net of a seat, immediately sliding towards the center and swinging awkwardly. He laughed quietly at his own clumsiness, and Tuhka couldn’t help but join in. Laz did look a bit ungainly like this, his tail whipping back and forth trying to balance, his hands groping out wildly. 

Tuhka grabbed his wrists— never hands— to steady him, and Laz smiled at him— a real smile, open and grateful, not the bitten-off baring of teeth he’d been giving him until now. 

“Well? Sit with me.”

Tuhka climbed in next to him, initially trying to leave space, but the nature of the hammock meant that they slid together almost immediately. They sat shoulder to shoulder for many minutes. Tuhka was immediately aware of the heat of Lazarus next to him, pressed from knee to shoulder with the same kind of infernal heat he’d always put out. It had been a comfort as a small child in a cold cave, and he longed for its comfort again; another part of him thought he did not deserve it. 

Did they even know each other, now? Who were they to each other?

Tuhka listened for any hint of conversation from Lazarus, but the tiefling beside him was quiet, aside from the occasional sigh. It hurt that Tuhka could tell that even with his even breathing and careful sprawl in the hammock, he could still see the tense line of Lazarus’s neck, the hold of his arms behind his head taut and hard. His tail, wiggling between his legs, twitched like an irritated cat’s. All of this only made Tuhka more wary.

Ooria had said something once, when Tuhka had first mourned his Laz so many years before. That the knowing of him was what mattered, not the loss. That the night was dark now, but the stars would sing for him again someday.

And now that he had Laz again, he could _know_ him again. Even if it meant starting over.

Tuhka relaxed incrementally, willing himself to take in the restful rhythm of the ocean spread before them. How many times before had he come down here when he needed a break? How often had he heard the steady whisper of the sea and let it lull him to calm? He was _sharing_ this with Lazarus. Opening up a space in his new life for part of his old. 

The water lapped at the shore in slow waves, crashing into soft foam that threatened Tuhka’s toes where they brushed the sand. Lazarus, in contrast, was hardly dressed for the setting: he wore fine boots and finer fabric for his sweeping ensemble, all sure to be impossibly full of sand by the end of a windy day if he stayed here long. Tuhka, barefoot and nearly bare-chested, suddenly felt underdressed.

The tides would change soon, crawling up to just under the line of their little recess within a few hours. The water here was gentle but cold, and persistent enough to wear the rocky shore into some kind of smoothness. Tuhka just needed to be like the waves. Or maybe more like the shore, to let himself be softened. 

He exhaled slowly, trying to think of something to say. At his side, Lazarus shifted, crossing one leg over the other in an elegant drape. 

At last, as the sun began to dip below the flaming orange horizon and settled the sky into indigo-lavender night, the encroaching darkness deep enough that Tuhka almost felt the need to cast Light to keep them from being completely in the dark, Lazarus spoke.

“So where have you been? Who are you now?”

“I should ask you the same,” Tuhka said, relieved that the silence seemed to be over. He leaned back in the hammock, swinging it with one long leg on the wet sand below. “I’m...not the same, but I’m still me— but better. I feel right.”

“Right? In what way?”

Tuhka shrugged. “I’m what I was meant to be. I feel... _more_. As I should be. And you?”

Lazarus’s tail twitched as he seemed to mull over his answer. “Different than I was.” He frowned. “Or at least I try to be. I wanted so badly to leave everything behind, H-Tuhka.” The _when I thought you left me behind, too_ , went unsaid.

“I know. I’m sorry,” Tuhka said, closing his eyes against the image of Lazarus’s fire-bright eyes dimmed and troubled.

“You don’t really need to be,” Lazarus assured him in a tone that still seemed gratified. 

They sat for a while longer as the sun fully set, casting flickering black shadows through the sand.

“You look good like this, you know,” Lazarus said after a long silence. Tuhka huffed a laugh, turning to look at him with a raised eyebrow. The grey tiefling gestured up and down at the full length of Tuhka’s body. “The...everything. Suits you. Like something out of a bodice-ripper,” he said cheekily, nudging Tuhka’s shoulder. “All you need to do is get some fancy illustrator to cover you in oil and pull out the paints—”

“Oh, sod off,” Tuhka said, shoving Lazarus a bit too hard. The hammock went swinging wildly, the two of them struggling to balance and whooping with startled laughter the whole time, finally only settling when they clung to each other and let the hammock find its center. 

“I like your tattoos,” Tuhka said suddenly, before he could stop himself. “Constellations?”

“Mm,” Lazarus hummed in confirmation. “From all over.”

“I recognize a few,” Tuhka said. “Remember how we used to look at the sky, planning our escape? How we fantasized about using the stars like a map.”

“Yes,” Lazarus said heavily. He let out a held breath. “Like the sailors used to talk about.”

“I don’t recognize some of those,” Tuhka said, leaning in to stare at the golden points of a cluster of stars along Lazarus’s shoulder. The tiefling’s adam’s apple bobbed as he turned away, cheeks flushed just the barest of plum. 

“Not local, as I’m sure you’ve realized,” Lazarus said, leaning into the hammock. His tail whirled between his legs, the tip flicking his ankle almost anxiously before the tiefling shifting his body entirely to lean into one corner of the hammock and swing his feet over into Tuhka’s lap with surprising casualness. “I saw some of them out there. Far away, where the sky looks completely different.”

“Off the continent?” Tuhka asked, impressed. He rested his hands on Lazarus’s boots. The leather was worn under his hand— well-travelled, well-used.

“Across seas and mountains,” Lazarus said, his eyes far away on some memory. “It’s a completely different sky out there.”

“A different viewpoint.”

They sat and stared at the sky above them now. The moon was a slim sliver in the sky, shining bright as a newly-minted silver coin winking at them from far. The dark side of it seemed to loom, a void in the otherwise vast spread of stars. 

Tuhka leaned back on his half of the hammock, content to listen to the waves as they came in navy dark and deep. Lazarus was warm at his side, the weight of his legs a comfort in Tuhka’s lap. Tuhka surreptitiously looked at Lazarus out of the corner of his vision: his eyes were blue as the hottest flames, a void as bright as lightning where the moonlight reflected back off the tapetum lucidum of his eyes.

It made something in his chest shift, like a ghost of an old wound making itself known. The jagged edge of a rock in his palms as he fell on the ground— and as had happened a thousand times, Lazarus always pulling him back up, soothing the hurt. It was a tender thing in his chest, sore in a way that satisfied.

“Can I— ?” Tuhka started.

“Will you— ?” Lazarus said at the same time. 

They paused, grinning at each other. 

Tuhka shifted. Lazarus, feeling the hammock rock, looked at Tuhka curiously, but made room for him anyway. They lay side by side like two peas in a pod, swinging lightly in the sea breeze. He was too big to be a little spoon now, but still Tuhka shifted down, resting his head on Lazarus’s shoulder, careful with his overgrown horns. 

He closed his eyes and listened to Lazarus breathe, slow and steady. Tuhka listened more intently, beyond the rush of the water before them: Lazarus’s heart beat not nearly as fast as it should have, but it was there, a slow, gentle thump off-tempo in Lazarus’s chest.

But he could adjust to that. He suspected there were a lot of things he’d have to adjust to about Lazarus. 

The ocean hissed in the distance, the water licking its way up the shore. They’d have to walk back through the foam, water at their heels. If they stayed too much longer they’d be wading back. The water sprayed, salty and cool on Tuhka’s face, and quite suddenly he was glad for Lazarus at his side. His hand curled at his own hip, not quite reaching, but glad to be close.

They lay there for a long time as the sea climbed up to meet them, rocking gently in the night breeze as the enchanted lights twinkled faintly above them. If Tuhka closed his eyes, it was like being small again, curled up in the dark waiting for sleep to come. 

He smiled, soft and fragile, a tentative thing. He wanted— hoped— that Lazarus could stay this time, at least for a while. Long enough for them to come to know each other again. So he could say his piece, the thing his heart had been sitting with for years, but now free of the melancholy of loss.

He smiled further as Lazarus reached down and grabbed his hand, his fingers long and rough and smaller than expected in Tuhka’s own. It was yet another sign of how the times had changed. Things were different now.

Lazarus squeezed his fingers as if thinking the same thing, then knocked his horn against Tuhka’s affectionately. 

And they sat in the dark as the water rose and the stars shone and the hammock swung, the two of them silent, but not broken. Their edges had found each other, and perhaps could fit together again, if not the same way as before, then in some new configuration. 

Later, they would wade back to the cliffside path through the rising tide, Lazarus with one hand holding his fine boots and the other on Tuhka’s back while they chattered, and Tuhka would think:

 _Ah, the stars_ do _sing._

.

**Author's Note:**

> hi im trans and tuhka is like beefling trans inspiration so THAMK U VIM FOR HIS EXISTENCE
> 
> if you wanna follow me on Twitter im @GoInterrobang. i write a lot of NSFW so be warned!


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